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My first week at DIS was absolutely fantastic! After arriving on Saturday at Mønten (the Kollegium where I’ll be living for the semester), I got to hang out with Hope (my fabulous DIS roommate!) and meet some Danes in Mønten. We had a tour of our little neighborhood in Amager (a mile and a half from DIS and the city center, just across the harbor) and then had dinner with our “smaller unit,” a group of four DIS students also living in our Kollegium. Some people come to DIS with a big group of students (30-40) from their home university, but there are only two of us Notre Dame students here, so having a smaller unit has been a great way for Hope and I to meet some new people. Mønten provided us with pizza for dinner (which ended up arriving two hours late, but this gave us some time to bond with our smaller unit) to help us feel at home.

Hope and I chose to brave the grocery store that evening, but we were so tired and jet-lagged that we decided to just get eggs and butter to cook for breakfast and deal with everything else later. The next morning, we realized that our butter smelled a little strange and was an interesting light brown color. It also didn’t really seem to be melting in the pan. We were a little suspicious, so we decided to Google the word on the package. It turns out that we hadn’t bought butter – we’d bought baking yeast. So besides no butter, we also had no salt, pepper, milk, or cheese for the eggs. We laughed at ourselves and made do with what we had – our first home-cooked meal in our kitchenette (however haphazard)! It also took us quite a while to figure out the Danish induction stove with its heat-sensitive touchpad, but we are slowly getting the hang of it (we’ve now successfully cooked pasta twice).

We braved the grocery store again later that day – it took us ten minutes standing in front of the spices aisle just to find black pepper, but we finally did it (a step up from the day before)! I also decorated my room and my desk with some pictures to remind me of home, friends, and family.

The next morning (Monday) we attended the DIS opening ceremony. The DIS director talked about how fun the semester will be, how much we’ll learn, how wonderful the faculty are, and our traveling opportunities. She mentioned that things will get difficult at times, and that we might encounter some near-death experiences in the bike lane (hopefully I survive that). She also gave us some very helpful tips on how to pronounce Danish words, because Danish is known to be one of the most easy and straightforward languages to learn:

One quote from her talk really stood out to me:

“How will your semester look? Well, that’s up to you.”

I have the whole semester in front of me, and I’m really excited to see where it takes me, from classes to traveling to becoming integrated to life here in Denmark. After the ceremony, I ended up making a Copenhagen bucket list to keep track of everything I want to do and see this semester. Every week in my blog post, I’ll let you guys know what I’ve crossed off my list! I’ll also do an “unexpected” list of things I never thought or knew I’d be doing (starting with accidentally buying baking yeast).

My close high school friend Fiona has been traveling Europe and came to Copenhagen to visit me this week! She, Hope, and I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday exploring Copenhagen. Here are a few of the fun things we did:

• jumping in the harbor pool (Islands Brygge)
• trying our first danish street hot dog (delicious!)
• exploring Nyhavn with Hope & Fiona
• HCA Boulevard

Besides all of that, we also did a free walking tour of Copenhagen (which I highly recommend!) that filled us in on some of the history of the city and took us to the royal palace. The tour was quite helpful to contextualize where we were and how the city has developed over time. We also went to a yummy brunch at Sonny, jumped on the trampolines by the canal, and to celebrate my birthday on Wednesday, we made pancakes for breakfast and had a picnic dinner in the park – that’s when we tried our first Wednesday snails (onsdagssnegles), which were super delicious!

I really enjoyed having Fiona here for the first few days, because we got to explore and do a lot of the “tourist-type” things in Copenhagen that I was excited to do. Now, I’m looking forward to getting into a routine and transitioning into more into living like a Dane. I rented my bike today for the rest of the semester, so I’ll keep you all posted on how my first cycling adventure goes (ideally Hope and I can make it to DIS in one piece). Here’s a video example of some cycling rules in Copenhagen and how seriously they take it here:

DIS orientation was absolutely fantastic – I got to attend some really helpful “Living Like a Local” talks about fashion & style, nightlife, and sports & fitness in Copenhagen. I’m planning to join a tennis club here, which will hopefully be a fun way to meet other young Danes – I’ll keep you posted on how that goes! I made this little word cloud with the words used to describe Copenhagen style during the “CPH Fashion” Living Like a Local talk. I think it actually captures quite well what I’ve seen around the city so far:

Finally, I had my first two days of classes this week. I’m really excited for my Human Health & Disease core course – our class is held in a hospital (Rigshospitalet) and taught by two Danish physicians. It’s definitely going to have a focus on clinical medicine, which I think will help me discern my path to becoming a doctor. I also think I’m really going to like my Health Economics & Health Policy course – our first field study next week is going to be a “street study,” where we ask local Danes on the street what they think about their healthcare system here in Denmark. I think these two classes will be the perfect way to integrate my academic and career interests in clinical medicine and healthcare policy reform, especially by contrasting the U.S. system with the Danish one. My Neuroscience of Fear class seems really engaging as well – the weather has been beautiful this week, so we had class outside today!

Overall, this week was absolutely fantastic – I can’t wait to see what the rest of the semester holds. Stay tuned for updates on my cycling adventures, my first full week of classes, my first field study, the DIS sustainable boutique & activities fair, and dinner with my visiting host family!

Bucket List Items I Accomplished This Week:

• Wednesday snails
• flødeboller
• Nyhavn
• trampolines
• jumping in the harbor pools
• picnic in the park
• Danish hot dog

Unexpected Things That Happened This Week:

• accidentally buying yeast instead of butter
• finding out that Danish showers are continuous with the rest of the bathroom floor, meaning you have to squeegee the entire floor after every time you shower